What is DMARC?
Consider DMARC to be a security guard for the emails sent from your domain.
It’s a setting you add to your domain (like yourstore.com) that tells email services such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Microsoft Outlook what to do if they receive a message pretending to be from you.
When someone sends an email from your domain:
DMARC checks if it’s legitimate
If it’s fake, it tells the receiving mail service to either send it to spam or block it completely
How the DMARC authentication process works:
An email claims to come from your domain.
The receiving service checks it using SPF and DKIM.
DMARC confirms whether the results match.
If not, the ISP routes the email as the DMARC record instructs it to; either allow, route to spam, or reject delivery.
Why does DMARC matter
Without DMARC, bad actors can send emails that look like they’re from your business. This is called spoofing.
They often use spoofed emails in phishing attacks to trick people into giving away sensitive information.
Major email providers now require DMARC to protect their users.
If you send emails without DMARC in place, your messages are more likely to:
Be flagged as spam
Not be delivered at all
Setting up DMARC helps protect your brand reputation and keep your emails reaching inboxes.
How to Get Started
You can set up DMARC using one of these free monitoring tools:
(If you already use Cloudflare, you can add DMARC in the Security Records section.)
To set up DMARC:
Sign up with a monitoring tool from the list above.
Follow their instructions to create a DMARC record.
Add that record to your domain’s DNS settings.
What’s Next
DMARC is an important step toward protecting your email reputation and improving deliverability.
Start by setting up a monitoring tool to track your email traffic, then gradually move from monitoring to enforcing DMARC.